Permanent jobs to become a big challenge in future, says CEO,Magna Infotech

Today, with major advancements in the recruitment and staffing sector, employers are looking for innovative ways to hire candidates. As 2018 approaches, the concept of permanent employment will be a real challenge. With technological advancements, employers will need to up their game in order to have a competitive edge.

TimesJobs interviewed Sanju Ballukar, CEO, Magna Infotech where he shared his views on the hiring sentiments of 2018.

1. What will be the key recruitment game changers in 2018?The demand for specific skillsets are changing much faster and so, the way the recruitment industry is going to cope is that they would require upskilling for employees who have been in the industry beyond 3 to 4 years. For instance, experience of 20 years might not make much difference now. One of the prominent things which would matter is what you did in the past 2-3 years and what can you do in the next 2-3 years. This has given rise to project based jobs. The recruitment process will soon get narrowed and social recruitment will still be an area of exploration. Job portals will continue to be the traditional channel to source candidates. For freshers and mid-level management, hackathons and online assessments will be a source to absorb best talent.

To sum up assessment, social media, hackathon, mini projects are some new recruitment methods to be noted in 2018.

2. In your industry, what skills and job roles will be in demand at junior, middle and senior level?Let me start with the mid- level job as we anticipate that mid-level jobs will have a soaring demand in the coming year. The employers are going to expect full stacked knowledge in the respective industries. For example, in the IT industry, there were various roles like a developer, project manager, architect etc. Software such as DevOps require skilled and trained resources.

For freshers, they must remain focused and be aware of at least basic programming data base concepts, connectivity and interfaces. It is advisable for freshers to know a software language in depth while having a broad understanding about the new and developing technology. For senior level, their expertise in domain carries a huge importance. A senior executive from the telecom industry with 20 years of experience would add value to the organization planning to hire him. The senior executives are expected to bring along administrative and project management skills, domain expertise and their understanding about the economics of business.

3. How is technology changing HR, especially recruitment?Technology is changing faster now and a lot of them are experimental. The use of artificial intelligence can be used to shortlist candidate profiles online as per the job description and specifications. Various tools have come up in the market to source candidates online but they are not at their prime. But the effort shall continue. Recruiters are also moving towards mobile- based interviewing platform; for example video interviews. We could imagine that more video-interviewing would be used in 2018.

5. What are the emerging skill sets you’d like fresh entrants in your industry to have?Industries are accepting and adopting automation. It is obvious that the demand for skill sets related to automation is going to be sought-after. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are the other two areas of demand and skills such as statistical regression analysis and data management will be in high demand. Mobile technology has been evolving and applications that are developed will support mobiles first and then desktops. Skills on IOS and android programming, in-programming, security, user interface, design, are essential. Freshers stand an advantage here as these skills are for next-gen technologies which were non-existent 10 years ago.

6. What will be the compensation and appraisal trends in your industry in 2017-18?In 2017, in terms of performance compensation, most of the performance pay raise was in single digits. In my opinion, it will not be very different in 2018 as well. The industry will see a guarded approach. There might be a single digit increase. Companies are going to have to invest on the skills of their employees which in itself is a compensation.

We have thoroughly analyzed our compensation and recently finished our mid- year appraisal. We, at Quess, are very competitive as we have a high growth trajectory. But even we are guarded in our approach as we aspire to retain the best talent from the industry.

7. What is the future outlook for the sector?According to Nasscom, the recruitment industry will grow in 10- 15% by 2018. Some of our customers also agree with the predictions in terms of headcount for the coming year. All these trends highlight that the need, importance and demand of contract staffing is going to increase in the next year.